He is one of the top celebrities in the country: a fast-talking TV host, who can joke his way out of any situation. Women want to be with him, men want to be like him. He is looking for a new topic to discuss in his popular talk-show. She is a teacher at a musical school – a timid girl looking for Mr. Perfect on an internet dating site. He will help her realise her potential and teach her how to recognise various types of men for what they are, she will teach him what real life is about. The show will become a huge hit. It seems they are destined to fall in love and be together, but one day she actually does meet Mr. Perfect on the net.

Most people outside Poland have never heard of the late-20th-century painter Zdzisław Beksiński, and even within the country few are familiar with director Jan P. Matuszyński. Yet for those paying attention to international arthouse cinema, “The Last Family” should boost name recognition for both. While unable to wholly surmount the usual problem of biopics, which either simplify (not the case here) or allow life’s messiness to remain disjunctured, the film is a remarkable, frequently unsettling exercise in staged voyeurism, recreating the interdependent lives of the three members of the troubled Beksiński family. Visually and musically reproducing the era to a T, and boasting terrific lensing by Kacper Fertacz, “The Last Family” is likely to pick up numerous awards on the festival circuit.